New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

I don't post often but wanted to throw in my voice. This is just... it looks so bad why on earth did they think this was okay?

Coming from someone who wants more wavy hairstyle options, it feels disappointing to know where this one comes from. I'm so sorry for the artist and their vision, with the amount of graphical upgrades the game is receiving it's pretty unbelievable the lack of care it was put into recreating this hairstyle and I'll have to agree with others in that labeling it as "inspired by" is disrespectful. If not now, please do better in the future, we all love this game and know the team is capable of much and more.

I literally made a forum account just to reply to this, because this is absolutely insane. Why are they so afraid of anything different and textured? The Curls hairstyle can't be the only one that we can have. They definitely can do it; they just don't want to.

This hairstyle looks nothing like the entry that it was inspired by, is a huge disservice to so much of your player base and there is frankly no excuse for it being this bad. I hope that it gets reworked before the patch is out, or very shortly after.

I am one of many that made a forum account just for this. It's really embarrassing that the dev team can't come through for the diverse player base. I expect more and am profoundly disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Glyphs

Another agreement. I also had to go through all the Hairstyle Design Contest winners when I saw this, because it felt like it had to be a different style, right? But no, this is the only one with any resemblance to the new hairstyle.

The "A new hairstyle inspired by a FFXIV Hairstyle Design Contest" wording, when previous winners have used the phrasing "A winning entry from the FFXIV Hairstyle Design Contest" is then also incredibly damning, and shows some self awareness.

This would be disappointing for any entry, but it seems that the development team does not understand the gravity that this particular hairstyle holds, as a rare and eagerly anticipated textured hairstyle. Even taking the "inspired by" as "maybe they'll release a more faithful version later on" is a bit disheartening, to see that a style with such importance did not take precedent. It truly seems that the team did not understand the relevance of what they were working with, and the principle of that is the most disappointing part here.

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I was willing to give them a pass on this as a change in language since the last time they implemented a Hairstyle Design Contest winner to account for adjustments they need to make to make it viable for the game, except for the fact that every other Design Contest item on THESE patch notes says "from" and not "inspired by".

Now it really does feel self-aware.

Adding another voice to this thread to say that I did not even realize this was connected to the hairstyle it is supposedly "inspired by". Take another pass at this because this is unacceptable compared to the other added hairstyles.

Also replying here to voice my support. While I myself am not POC, I am aware of how important POC aligned hairstyles are needed in this game. Now that the Devs don't plan to add any more races to the game, it would be better to spend time making things like hairstyles more diverse so players can feel more represented in games. I hope that if the developers do plan to add in hair that is POC inclusive, they will make them part of the base kit or not millions of gil to obtain.

Please do better developers- we all know the amazing things you can create in this game so making the game feel more diverse and inclusive shouldn't be a tall order.

It looks wrong. Please try again.

I was really looking forward to the release of this style. Now? Not so much. Please...let people see themselves in their WOLs and have hairstyles that reflect their real selves as much as possible. With the dearth of curly styles in game already this was a delicate task and was treated very indelicately.

The finished hairstyle looks sloppily done and it's apparent that the 3D artist was very uncomfortable with the design process. It's not impossible to execute curly hairstyles using 2D cards in a 3D game like this. With enough effort and patience this style could be done right but it's apparent that this wasn't worth the time to the team which is incredibly disappointing. I would rather it be removed and redone as well as possible for a future patch then just accept this.

Please fix this!

I'm coming in to add my own voice in agreement that the hair style is done very poorly. It's such a shame to see the original concept watered down to what looks like someone got water dumped on their head. It's missing volume and life.

The hair previewed in the patch notes looks cheap and gross, like a bad perm... rather than rushing out a bad style, I wish they had taken their time to properly implement the tight curls and texture :\ This was one of the most anticipated hairstyles too, so seeing it completely butchered makes me worry that all of the hairstyle contest winners will look bad.

I completely agree with the comments above. This is an insult to the original contest entry. The fact that they called it "inspired by" the contest entry shows that they understand they failed to depict it... and yet they chose to keep it anyway.

Very disappointed.

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Originally Posted by Madqueenmomo

Hello, I’m the original creator and artist and i just wanted to say thank you for fighting to fix the hair or at lest have SE do better for the other hairstyles that won.

I understood that the hair would not be an exact 1 to 1 to my design but , since i saw how to treated previous designs that won including my mch gun, i had assumed that would at lest find a way to make it somewhat recognizable.

The thing that really bothers me is the fact that I made this hair for my friends and for people who needed this representation.
All three of the hairs i submitted were made with them in mind while i specifically also toned it down enough that they could be used with non poc characters. Especially since curly hair is something that anyone of any skin color and ethnicity could have. (Which is why i even added the examples of non dark skinned characters using it)

When the hair won, i had so many heartfelt and emotional thank you messages from so many people around the world because their hair was finally going to be in game.
So many people who were just happy to finally be themselves.
Now i’m just here so angry and disappointed for them because not only does it look nothing like it while being of strange odd quality, it just also feels like they didn't even try and now all those players lost something they needed.

I would love to be wrong. I would love to learn that someone tried really hard, and even fought to have more curly hair in the game.
Cause atlest then it wouldn't be such a letdown or betrayal.


I want to end with, i know the dev team is probably overworked and overwhelmed. And i do not mean them any hate or bad words. I just wish they can take their time and get things right next time.

Sorry for the long post. And thank you.

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I'm glad to see you speak up here, and I'm sorry that you need to. <3

I doesn't say that it's from a winning entry and they have been known to sometimes use entries that didn't win, so I wonder if it's one of the hairs that didn't win? They didn't do it with hair yet, but they do it with furniture all the time. They usually put "A winning entry from the FFXIV Hairstyle Design Contest is now available." and this it the only time I remember seeing it not say WINNING, it only says entry.

I hope it's not the one it's based on, but also worried that because people are not being particularly constructive about this that they won't try more curly hair in the future now. I personally was really excited to see them actually try to do something not straight, feels like the last time we got a curly hair was the afro and as someone with curly hair, I would really like to see many more curly hairstyles.

Coming in to say that I also agree with everyone that looks awful and it is disrespectful to the artist of the entry.

I was really excited when I first saw the art, but the in game result is super disappointing :(

Very much hoping they will reconsider how this is implemented and make it look more like the art. There is so few options for textured hair in the game as is, it would be a shame to loose out on something that looks like the original art.

Also want to support this. We have barely any textured hair options in this game and none that are properly curly. This is not properly curly, when the design very much was. The artist's entry is also just really cute and this... there's an aspect of having had a bucket of water dumped on your head to it.

The graphical update included many great changes to the game's visuals and display capabilities. I would think that would present a good opportunity to implement a style like this, as we can have styles with higher poly counts than we previously could. And if you don't have the perf budget to do it properly, you really should have picked a different entry to implement-- there were plenty of great-looking braided entries with textured hair that would have been possible to implement with less model complexity.

I really think this hairstyle needs a significant rework to bring it in line with the original concept before it can be released.

Posting in the forums for the first time, if that's supposed to be that contest winner it's truly abysmal. I hope, at least, that they take a better shot at it in the future if they can't do anything about it.

Also in agreement with all those unhappy with this. I understand how busy the dev team must be, but I know they are capable of doing better than insulting an artist who took the time out of their schedule to try to draw something heartfelt for people who are already sorely underrepresented in this game's visuals. That they did not even try to implement the curly look is extremely disappointing.

Yeeah this hair is terrible. I don't know if they could have made it properly curly (no one would want what Byregot has on his head as a player model), but what they did just looks goofy.

Though I'd like to note for the people hollering white white white white whiiiiiite for this...the devs are Japanese, and white people are far more likely to have hair as curly as the fan entry than Japanese people are.

I'm another who registered to the forums just to reply to this thread.

Even when I was scrolling through the patch notes this morning, my first thought when I saw that hairstyle was "that looks unfinished" ... and then I learned what hairstyle it was supposed to be. This doesn't even deserve a "you tried" sticker. You didn't even try.

It was refreshing to see a curly hairstyle amongst the winners. It was nice to see just how many people were excited and happy that a style that they were excited for - represented by, even - was among the chosen.

I would almost excuse it if it was meant to be a separate hairstyle entirely. If it was released alongside the actual hair that was submitted to begin with, but it's painfully clear that was not meant to be the case.

To echo what a lot of people have said, for all of the work and hype the team put out for diversity in DT (and even the continued act of removing genderlocks from some outfits), this really is a slap in the face for POC. They were excited to finally have a curly textured hair, and then they got a barely textured spare mop head.

Please, please go back and redo this. Don't be "inspired by," just make the hair it was meant to be. You've done curls before. Go back and put some actual care and effort into a hairstyle that would genuinely mean a lot to a large portion of your playerbase. It's disheartening to see the reactions of the artist and the players that were excited for this. Please do better.

Not to bring up the taboo of third-party tools, but it is exceptionally disheartening when I see work posted on social media by players - mods - that use existing mesh parts and existing textures already in the game and still manage to create more impressive curls than this. People who receive no compensation for their work are creating better curly hair than this, and yet Square Enix's paid artists are falling this short?

The more this happens, the more I understand why some players feel cosmetics-related third-party tools are a necessity to see themselves inside the game. What is preventing Square from simply hiring these artists, or reaching out to collaborate if they are unsure of how to achieve these styles? Players create these styles for themselves, for no reason except love of the game, with no monetary compensation, on social media often; why can Square not achieve the same? If Square wanted to discourage third-party tool usage, these forms of representation should be available within the game itself.

Also voicing my support and frustration. When I originally saw this in the patch notes I didn't even recognise which winner it was. I had to look through all the entries to even figure out which one it was.
The hair looks like waves, not curls, and it doesn't have the overall volume/fluffiness that the concept has.
Even if proper 5c curls aren't doable with the current setup, it would be nice to have actual curls of some sort and not waves.
This frustrates me as a player who just wanted to see more diversity in the hairstyles we have, even as someone who didn't plan on using the hair myself.
We have many hairs that are chin length or shorter and straight/lightly wavy, so the excitement for this hair was that it was fluffy and a texture completely unlike anything else we have.
I honestly just feel bad for the contest winner as this does not fit the spirit of thier design at all. And I'm not sure how you could even call this "natural curls" like the entry's name when there are no curls to speak of.

This is super disappointing to see, especially when Raubahn, a character that's been there since 1.0, has tighter curls than they did in this one. Their version of Fran is another example of a more complex hair texture that comes to mind. And with the graphic changes, hair texture has only gotten easier to show. So this just feels like it was rushed or unfinished.
Please actually take the proper time to do things right!

I also agree with those who are frustrated and disappointed. I didn't even recognize the coming hairstyle was the entry in question at all despite loving that entry so much, and not liking the hairstyle previewed in the patch notes. I would prefer they take more time and care with these things because this is so important to do right.

it's honestly genuinely and overwhelmingly disappointing for this to be the apparent best the team is able to do. i almost couldn't believe that it was "inspired" by the contest design in was modeled after... they *have* to do better than this, and i hope they care enough to listen to the playerbase + the artist who submitted the design and make an actual effort to make it at least somewhat like the original design

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Originally Posted by tnwnx

This is super disappointing to see, especially when Raubahn, a character that's been there since 1.0, has tighter curls than they did in this one. Their version of Fran is another example of a more complex hair texture that comes to mind. And with the graphic changes, hair texture has only gotten easier to show. So this just feels like it was rushed or unfinished.
Please actually take the proper time to do things right!

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Rhauban doesn't have curly hair like this. He has braids that goes to be wavy. Much easier to model than the curly.

Issue is most likely technical in that the curly design sadly exceeds the amount of polygons they can allow. While the game also lacks the support for more advanced methods of portraying hair found in newer games.

So if it were to be curly it would be like the afro, mostly one flat blob with curly texture, somehow.

Utterly astounded, seeing the patch notes this morning I did not even think that was even the same hairstyle. I highly doubt that it's not possible to model something like this in game, especially now with the amount of small details that can be done now with the new graphics, and I've seen multiple other games with far lesser graphical fidelity manage textured hair much better. Here it just looks like wet noodles... Honestly disappointed to see this.

Taking a moment to add to my disappointment about the hair, as is. The original concept had *lift* and *body*, and this is just flat and lifeless. It doesn't even seem "inspired by" the original concept, as it doesn't even have the *intention* behind the original concept in mind. It's like the developers thought the sentiment of 'oh, add some zig zags' was the main point, and they missed the mark on what the *point* of the design was.

Wow I did not even recognize this as the winning entry until someone shared this thread... Extremely disappointing. :\

Please reconsider on this one. If you can't execute a hairstyle like that correctly, please hire someone with the knowledge base to do so. There are plenty of people that can do it justice!

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Originally Posted by lucatracy

How much should we bet that they're not going to pull this "inspired by" bs when it comes to any of the straight hair winners, and they'll ACTUALLY put effort into replicating it?

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You mean like the kpop twink hairstyle we got in 7.0?

Logging here to express support for this sentiment
As a latina, I wonder the reason for the contradiction of the dedication to good cultural portrayal in Dawntrail and turning around to do this to a real hair many people on the planet have, including many Latinoamericans the real-life Turali.


Even if there was no ill intention, this reflects poorly on the teams involved and needs proper addressing and fixing. The hair style doesn't even try to follow the volume in the art direction. Surely that isn't a problem with gear clipping since the very questionable Afro disco hair is in this game?


I'm sure many Black artists would be happy to be consultants for the technical team. Representing things well is part of artistic skill and would level up their resumes, which if I remember correctly is one of the reasons behind the graphical update. I really hope they do this.

I saw the new hair saying it was from the contest winner, sorry, "Inspired" by the contest winner, and I couldn't even think which one they were trying to do.

This is disappointing, and disrespectful to both artist and community. It's like they didn't bother.

chiming in with my first ever forums post to emphatically voice my disappointment with the implementation of this new hair. i have spent four years playing this game hoping to get another at least wavy, if not outright curly hairstyle. this is not it. there are far too many liberties taken with this, and the texture looks abysmal. cbu3 constantly makes a joke out of black hairstyles (note: the bouncy afro) and im sick of it. I was excited for a new hair for ONCE and im really hoping they change this :/

I would be interested to hear what these games are! I saw someone else mention Guild Wars 2 but they have higher specs than Dawntrail
I've been meaning to collect different replies into one big one with references that hopefully serves as good feedback for when the devs address this (as they should)

Responding to this thread to +1 support revising this hairstyle to be faithful to the original artist's intent. Hopefully the devs treat this as seriously as complaints about the updated character models and take swift steps to address the problems outlined in this thread.

Set up my forum account to chime in.

I understand the polygon limitations, and yes, it probably isn't possible to recreate the original one to one. However, the hair could have had more curls painted into the normal, or a couple layered flat texture to get this some lift. As it is, the first thing I thought was that it looked limp, and I never could have guess it was supposed to be the contest winner. Though I hadn't intended on using the original style, I was another person who was very excited to see them win, so this is very disappointing to see.